The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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With its sights set on gold, Contango Ore Inc. raised US$8.8 million in March to fund a US$6.75 million exploration program on its Alaska projects during the 2012 field season - the bulk of which was spent on a second-year drill program at the Tetlin gold-copper project about 12 miles (19 kilometers) southeast of the crossroads town of Tok. The Houston, Texas-based explorer, known as CORE, is an Alaska-focused mineral spinout from Contango Oil & Gas Co., an exploration and...
Putting Alaska on the map as a domestic source of rare earth elements and other strategic and critical minerals is a priority of Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell. During the 2012 budget cycle, Alaska lawmakers approved US$498,000 proposed by the administration to begin a statewide REE evaluation. This year's budget includes US$2.7 million for a three-year project to continue this initiative. "Alaska can become America's source for rare earth elements," Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell...
Alaska officials are seeking to turn the national challenge of securing domestic supplies of critical minerals into an opportunity. "Alaska has accepted the challenge," Gov. Sean Parnell told participants in the Strategic and Critical Minerals Summit held Sept. 30 in Fairbanks. "Where China has said, 'We're going to curtail exports,' Alaska is accepting the challenge of saying, 'We've got them here, and we want to provide them to our nation and to the world beyond." The Department of Natural Resources organized the...
Alaska's mineral industry set a new spending record of about $4 billion in 2007, up 13.3 percent from the value of the industry's expenditures in 2006, according to an 89-page report released Nov. 5 by the Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys and the Office of Economic Development. The industry's reported value, according to DGGS, is calculated by combining the amount spent on exploration and development with the production value of mines in Alaska. While 2007 was a...
It is said that those who forget their history must relive it. It appears that geologists working together with the State of Alaska have found a unique way to make that adage come true. Imagine spending hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars building an active database and then stashing it in an unsecured facility where access, at best, is difficult and retrieval of the data for review places those very data at risk. That, however, is exactly the way the State is...
Alaska mining activity climbed to new heights in 2006 with the value of exploration, development and production exceeding $3.5 billion. Production values more than doubled, leaping to $2.86 billion from $1.4 billion in 2005, according to Alaska's Mineral Industry 2006, an annual report released Nov. 7. Continuing high zinc prices played a key role in the record-breaking tally for the industry, the report said. The Red Dog Mine north of Kotzebue, the world's largest zinc mine,...
The report of the 2005 Alaska Minerals Commission, published in January, stresses the urgent need to overcome the twin obstacles of permitting and lawsuits at a time when the mining industry is experiencing a dramatic upsurge in activity. Since its creation in 1986 the commission has made annual recommendations to the governor and Legislature on ways to mitigate constraints on the development of minerals, including coal, in the state. "Despite the improvements in 2004, the industry continued to be dogged by an array of...
The Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys released new airborne geophysical data and maps for the Goodpaster River area in Interior Alaska on Jan. 24. The survey covers approximately 210 square miles in the western Goodpaster mining district, which is home to the Pogo deposit. (See map on page 15.) Several mining companies, including AngloGold, Rimfire, Freegold and Teck Cominco, are active in the area. "We use these data all the time and have found more and more uses for the geophysical data since (the...
Estimates of $1.05 billion for Alaska's mineral industry value in 2003 were released by state officials on March 9, making it the eighth straight year the industry's value exceeded $1 billion. Rising prices for almost all metals, including gold, silver, zinc, and lead, increased the 2003 value of metal production in Alaska by 2 percent from 2002 levels, according to the annual report released by the state Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. Contributing heavily to Alaska's mineral industry are the state's three...
Alaska's "winter that wasn't" is nearing its end and with it the mining industry is gearing up for another summer season. This season promises to see less intense activity in the gold exploration sector, more polymetallic and platinum group element exploration along with continued development activities at Red Dog, Greens Creek, Fort Knox and the Pogo project. To underscore this recent shift away from gold and into other metals, the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada recently awarded its prestigious Prospector...